


Contour Lines

by momoejaku



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 14:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13343037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momoejaku/pseuds/momoejaku
Summary: For @sqoiler on tumblr.Prompt: “I almost lost you” kiss with platonic Damian and StephSong rec: "I Love It" by DEAN





	Contour Lines

**Author's Note:**

> For @sqoiler on tumblr.  
> Prompt: “I almost lost you” kiss with platonic Damian and Steph
> 
> Song rec: "I Love It" by DEAN

Damian continued to rub his slightly trembling hands, shaking his head when Alfred offered him a cup of tea. Alfred hesitated for a beat but, to his credit, did not pester him as Grayson would have. Damian knew by now that any pestering came from a place of love, but that didn't stop the frustration from bubbling up and beating against his tiny chest in short accusations and slammed doors.

And tonight, he just didn't have the energy for that.

His eyes looked towards the medical unit of the cave and watched as Stephanie Brown pulled a clean shirt over her stomach, covering the wound Alfred had just cleaned, stitched up and wrapped. It would scar. Damian had felt the deepness of the wound, and knew that, no matter how good Alfred’s stitches were, Stephanie would be faced with that long, angry scar and the memories of tonight for the rest of her life.

She accidently knocked some of the gauze off of the gurney; stained with blood. Damian looked back down at his hands, expecting to find the same red smudges there, but remembered he had already cleaned them. He rubbed at the palm of his left hand and tried to ignore the wince that escaped Stephanie as she walked over towards him.

'Well _that_ was a close one if there ever was one,' she said, her tone attempting and largely succeeding at lightness. She sat down, laughing to cover up the pain. 'Thanks for saving my butt back there.'

' _Tt_. I merely ensured that your wound was compressed until Alfred came to retrieve us,' Damian said, staring at the floor.

'And beat all those punks single-handedly. I may have been watching from a pile of garbage, but even from that angle I could tell you did an awesome job. I mean, I wouldn't tell Bruce about the fact that you took them on alone while I was k.o.'d, but,' Stephanie shoved her thumb at his face with a grin, 'it's a big thumbs up from me.'

Damian did not respond, and Stephanie let her hand fall back down to her lap with a small frown. They sat there in awkward silence for a moment, Alfred’s usual hovering presence intentionally ignoring them as he continued to clean medical equipment.

'I need to go,' Damian said shortly, standing up suddenly and stalking past Stephanie and Alfred, ignoring their eyes as they watched him climb the stairs up to the manor and then disappear.

Stephanie sighed, laying back on the wet floor of the cave, her blonde hair a tangled mess. 'Why do I always screw this stuff up, Alfred?'

'Beg pardon, Miss Stephanie?' Alfred said from across the cave, frowning in deep disaproval at the sight of the invalid sprawled out on a germ-ridden, mouldy floor.

'I try to connect with Damian and get him to open up with me, but I can never say the right things.'

'One does not "get" Master Damian to do anything, Miss Stephanie,' the butler responded, his voice dripping with the familiar dry humour that had stolen her heart the first time she'd overheard him communicating with Tim over the comm. 'One persuades.'

Craning her neck upwards, she frowned at Alfred. 'Yeah, okay. So, how do I _persuade_ Damian to talk to me about what’s bothering him?'

Alfred eyes twinkled as he considered her question. 'I have always found that, with Master Damian, actions are more valuable than words. What you do does not matter as much as your motivations and intentions do. As the saying goes: it’s the thought that counts.'

'"It’s the thought that counts…"' Steph murmured, making a face as she racked her mind for ideas. Her eyes grew wide and she jolted up. 'Eurekaaaaaahhhh, _fuck_. I think I tore my stitches.'

Lips pressed together firmly, Alfred helped Stephanie back to the gurney and jingled the coin jar sitting next to antiseptics. Begrudgingly, Steph put fifty cents into the jar, then lay down so Alfred could fix her stitches. 

* * *

 

Easel and paint-splattered canvas clattered to the floor of Damian's bedroom.

He sat there on his stool watching the colours from the overturned containers pool out on floorboards of polished oak. The red flashed in his memory until it was not his easel laying there but Stephanie, choking, bleeding, dying out. And all he could do was sit there and helplessly watch. He buried his hands in his hands with a shaking breath and, squeezing his eyes shut, tried to will the image to leave him…

The door burst open and Damian started, losing balance on the stool and tumbling backwards into a heap.

'Shi…itake mushrooms. I forgot to knock,' Stephanie winced, genuine apology mixed in with confusion at the mess on Damian’s floor. 'Sorry. I can go out again and knock if you want?'

She stepped outside with an awkward grin and rapped on the wooden doorframe.

'The damage is already done, Brown,' Damian growled, standing and quickly moving to clean up the paints and easel.

'Were you painting?' Stephanie asked curiously, entering into the room again.

Damian broke the canvas over his knee in one swift motion, and glared at her.

' _No_.'

A lipstick fell out of the pile of cosmetic bags and products Stephanie held in her arms, and rolled across the floor.

Stephanie’s mouth snapped closed as he threw the two pieces into his bin and proceeded to scrub paint out of the floorboards.

'O-kay…' she began hesitantly. ‘Well, I was kind of hoping you'd be up for trying out a new type of art? If you're not too busy with your… “not painting.” I know you're good, and I could use your, er, expertise.'

Damian narrowed his eyes at her, glancing suspiciously at the products she was carrying. ‘You were just injured, Brown. You should be recuperating not pestering me. Did Pennyworth put you up to this? You can tell him that I am perfectly fine. Alone.’

'No, Damian… I just, didn't want our time together to end with you feeling all upset and moody.'

'I am _not_ moody,' Damian bristled, brandishing a set of paintbrushes.

To his dismay, Stephanie merely made an unconvinced sound and brushed past him to sit in front of the big mirror he sometimes used for practicing kata and correcting his posture. He put his hands on his hips and watched in disbelief as she started opening bags and spreading out various coloured products across the wooden floor.

'What do you think you're doing?'

'Ooh, you _really_ sounded like Bruce there,’ she said, but continued before he could retort. 'I'm getting all the makeup ready. You can choose whatever you want, though I'm really curious to see how your contouring skills compare to mine.'

'Brown, I'm not in the mood for indulging your childish hobbies.'

‘And I'm really not in the mood for indulging your childish refusal to accept this as the exercise in relaxation that this is.’ Stephanie pat the floor beside her and proceeded to tie her hair up into messy bun. 'C'mon. I'm literally letting you do whatever you want to my face. You could write “Stephanie Brown is an asshole” in black lipstick and I wouldn't be mad.'

Damian’s eyebrow twitched, and Stephanie gave herself a mental high-five. _Persuasion._

The boy sat down in front of her wordlessly, his legs crossed as if he were preparing to meditate, and inspected the cosmetic products carefully. While he was weighing up a foundation and a black lipstick in his hands, Steph pulled out her phone and turned on some soft Korean pop. Damian looked up and frowned at the phone as she set it down beside her.

'Is the music going to bother you?'

'No… I might as well practice my Korean. So I can get something out of this trivial, meaningless exercise.'

'Cool beans,' she finger-gunned him with a wink then closed her eyes, resting her elbows on her knees so Damian could reach her face. 'Okay. Whenever you're ready, do your worst. I trust you.'

'That,' Damian said slowly, 'would be your first mistake.'

There was a moment of silence between them, filled only by the trippy beat and falsetto voices of whatever k-pop singer this was. Stephanie started to get antsy, tapping her finger to the beat and bobbing her head.

'Hold still,' Damian ordered her.

She froze, holding her breath as the cold liquid of foundation was carefully applied by hand. Damian continued to give her directions. _Lean your head up slightly. Back down. You have a loose strand of hair. Don't touch your face, you'll smudge it!_

Stephanie wrinkled her nose a few times, trying to satisfy the itch that was almost unbearable now. There was a break and Stephanie opened her eyes to watch Damian get up and turn on a nearby lamp. She glanced into the mirror and clutched at her chest as her heart skipped a beat, the contour lines making her look almost skeletal.

' _Shit_ …' she breathed, and Damian raised an eyebrow at her, sitting back down and picking up a blender. 'Yeah, I think this is it. This is the look. I'm ready for my close-up with Cover Girl Magazine.'

She made a duck-face and struck a pose. Damian clicked his tongue, unimpressed.

'This is my first time blending makeup, I'm accustomed to a working on a canvas that doesn't fidget and make a fool of itself.'

'Well this fool is easy, breezy… and worth it.'

'Perhaps. This makeup isn't of a very high quality.'

'Um, yes, excuse you? We can't all afford Cle de Peau’s " _The_ Foundation" like Cate Blanchett.'

'I don't know who that is. Close your eyes.'

‘What's the magic word?’

Damian grew red.

'I was not the one who wanted to embark on this pointless endeavour. But I would be happy to finish now,' he snapped.

Stephanie grumbled, but acquiesced, and closed her eyes again. Damian began to blend, rather aggressively, and the anger practically emanated from his cold, wordless actions.

She felt herself losing hope, felt stupid for thinking she could get Damian to open up during a makeup session. She berated herself for not having the right words, for endangering herself and getting stabbed in the first place, for forcing Damian to look after her when it should have been the other way around.

She was just about to suggest they throw in the towel, about to complain about pain and stop bothering Damian and making everything worse, when she realised he had stopped blending. She opened her eyes and looked at the boy as he fumbled with the blending sponge in his hands, staring at the brown stains, squeezing it.

'You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to Dami,' Stephanie said, leaning forward and placing a hand over his. He recoiled from her touch and then looked guilty. 'I just want to help.'

He met her eyes and Stephanie read them in silence. The fear, the cold knowledge that she had almost bled out in the streets of Gotham. That at the end of the day, no matter his skills or training, this was a twelve-year-old boy. A twelve-year-old boy who had been left alone in an alley to compress a bloody knife wound as she had grown pale and faded in and out of consciousness.

 _I almost lost you,_ his deep, hazel eyes said.

 _I know,_ she responded. _I know. But you didn't. I'm still here._

A look of comforted hurt streaked across Damian's face. He looked back down at his hands, breaking eye contact.

Stephanie bit her lip nervously and looked into the mirror.

'Holy professional makeup Batman!' she yelped, forgetting the whole exchange, her mouth dropping open as she scrambled forward to inspect Damian’s artistry in the mirror. 'You actually did an amazing job?'

The boy clicked his tongue impatiently. 'Naturally. Now stop gaping at your own reflection and let me finish.'

The moment passed, just like that. But Stephanie found herself smiling, all the same.

Damian lived up to his boasting, choosing the perfect combination of gold and peach eye shadows, and spending so much time fussing over her eyebrow shape that Stephanie forced him to move on.

As she frowned, arms crossed and staring up at the ceiling, Damian began to carefully apply the eyeliner. He was surprisingly gentle, careful, using slow, attentive movements that she did not often see in combat. Her insecurity and annoyance faded quickly, and soon Damian was adding finishing touches of blush to her cheeks.

'What colour lipstick?' he asked her. 'Loathe as I am to ask for your preference.'

She grinned at him, batting her eyelashes. 'Purple, please.'

He narrowed his eyes into a glare. 'Purple doesn't… _Tt._ Fine. Have it your way.'

Damian picked out a few purples, testing them on the dark skin of his left hand, holding it up to Steph’s face, visualising. He settled on a brighter shade of violet, and furrowed his brows as he concentrated on the curve of her lip, keeping in the lines. Steph blew into his eyes and he jerked back. She burst out laughing, clutching her bandaged side.

'Smudge your lipstick, and I tell Alfred you've started hallucinating from the blood loss and need to be put under.'

Steph's jaw snapped closed and, cautiously, Damian leaned in to finish. Stephanie noticed that he was mouthing the Korean lyrics and felt her heartstrings tugged. Finally, with a drawn out critical hum, Damian surveyed his work.

'Can I just look already?' Steph whined.

'No.'

Damian snatched up a shimmery, purple eyeshadow and applied graceful sweeping lines beneath her eyes, reaching across her cheekbones. Then, snapping the lid shut, he took Steph by her shoulders and turned her towards the mirror.

'Now, you may look.'

'Oh my god…’ Stephanie breathed, her fingers reaching up to touch her lips. She laughed, full of glee. ‘I look like a fairy! Or a mermaid.'

'You forced me to change my concept when you chose the purple lipstick,' the boy muttered, cleaning up the cosmetics, sorting it into the bags.

'Dames… I'm serious, this is, incredible.'

She caught the small smile out of the corner of her eye and knew, it was time.

Scooting up against him, Stephanie took the younger boy in her arms and, ignoring his protestations, planted a kiss onto his cheek. He sputtered and managed to break free from her grasp, bemoaning the bright purple kiss print that she had left him with.

* * *

 

Alfred found them later, asleep in Damian's bed, Stephanie's makeup smeared against a white goose-feather pillow. With a laboured sigh, Alfred made to cover the two of them with a blanket when he suddenly caught sight of Damian’s face.

Doubling over, Alfred wheezed and, stifling his laughter as best he could, retreated out of the room.

The boy rolled over in his sleep with a wordless mumble, revealing a thick moustache drawn in black eyeliner, and the words "Stephanie Brown is an asshole" scrawled across his forehead.


End file.
